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The Way of the Heart

Book by Swami Dhyan Giten · 8 quotes · Love, Life, Meditation

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The Way of the Heart Quotes

“Religion is a paradox; you have to become nothing to become all. You have to become nobody to become a god. You have to prepare for nothingness, and then the whole descends in you. Jesus says that the meek, the humble and the egoless belong to the kingdom of God. So the person who is not is the greatest, and the person who thinks that he is the greatest is just an idiot. People like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Ghingis Khan, George W. Bush are basically stupid. Their whole desire is psychopathy, narcissism and megalomania. They create much suffering for themselves and other people. They go on stuffing their ego like a balloon, and then one day it bursts. Every day the ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and a moment comes when the puncture of the balloon happens, and everything goes flat. The ego is the roots cause of it, it is bound to create hell for yourself and for other people. Egolessness is paradise. The moment that you are meek, humble and egoless, you will enter into the kingdom of God. Then the last should be first. To be egoless is to be in the kingdom of God. But everybody is trying to be the greatest. And the whole project is doomed from the beginning, because it cannot succeed. It has never succeeded, because it is against existence. It is trying to work against existence. Ego means that you are trying to win against the whole, which is not possible.The part can never win over the whole. No-ego means that you dissolve with the whole. Then suddenly life becomes a totally new  phenomenon. Then life has tremendous  love, silence, joy, truth, freedom and beauty.”

“Man can live either as an island isolated from existence. He can think himself separated, but then there is misery. The misery is created, because we are going against existence. You cannot be happy if you are going against existence. Then you are fighting a losing battle trying to swim upstream in opposition to the current of the river of life. You may succeed for a while, but sooner or later you will be tired and  exhausted. It is your own ideas that the river is an enemy that has created the whole problem. The river is not fighting you. You have tried to fight it,and you got defeated. The part can never win over the whole, If you would have accepted going with the flow of the river, there would have been no defeat. You would not have felt that existence has been against you. You would have felt that existence is a friend.  You would have felt a joy in going with the river. You would have felt that the river was giving you strength. That is the way of the religious person. The first way - The way of the ego  - is the way of the irreligious person. The second way - The way of the heart - is the way of letting go. It is the way of the religious person. And the moment that you let go and merge with existence, God becomes your strength and there is great rejoicing in the heart. Then each momentis a moment of joy without any fight and struggle. That is the miracle of being religious.”

“Man can live either as love or as an ego. These are the only two alternatives  in life. It is the only two alternative lifestyles. The ego is very attractive, because it promises great things, although it delivers nothing. The ego creates dreams and fantasies, but these fantasies take you further away from yourself. And to be away from yourself is to be away from God, the divine. Love is not at all persuasive. It will not prove itself. You have to choose love, because it does not propagate itself. When the ego fails, because of its deceptive dreams and mirages, it fails for intelligent people. For the stupdid people, it never fails. In that failure of the ego, one moves to egolessness. This is what love is: love is egolessness. Now there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve and your whole energy starts resting within yourself. And when your energy comes to rest at your center, one comes to know that one is not, only God is. One comes to know that God is my strength. One comes to know that God is my existence, hat God is my being. One comes to know that one is just a small manifestation of divine energy. To know it brings great joy. All worries disappears, all entities disappear, and now you know that there is somebody greater than you who takes care. You are his project to help you to be joyful. When you are inside yourself, you immediately hear the still, small voice within you - and that becomes your inner teacher, your inner guide and your guiding star. Then you have your own insight and you know what is right and wrong. Now you know that living according toone'e own being is to live authentically. That is the way of the spiritual person.”

“Man is not an isolated island, but we live with the false notion of being an island. We are part of the whole. We are not apart from the whole. We belong to the continent, and the continent is infinite. The ego is an island,. but your being is not an island. To follow the dictates of the ego is to make a mess of your life, because it takes you away from the unity of existence. It is trying to create a separate entity, it is trying to be separate from the unity of existence. This is doomed to fail from the beginning, because it is not in accord with the law of existence. How can the three be separate from the earth? How can the leaf be separate from the tree? The moment the tree is separate from the earth it is dead. Life is being with the tree. Life is part of the tree. The larger your ego is, the more it suffocates our being, our life source. The moment you drop the ego, you are free. You are free from all imprisonments. Then the whole universe belongs to you. Then all the stars, rivers and mountains are part of you. To be in this unity is to be in joy.”

“Love is always great. Greatness is part of love. Vastness is the flavour of love. That is why our so-called love is not love, because it is too small. If love is too small, it is not love. Our love is too confined, too conditioned and too demanding. And then life becomes a desert. And one feels that there is no meaning , no joy, no growth, no poetry and no music in life. And all is futile and meaningless. But we are responsible for the desertlike and joyless existence. Without love, we become dry. With love, there is joy. With love, there is growth. Love can only be great. The problem is that we want something mpossible: we want love, and we also want to protect our ego. The ego is small, and love is always great. They cannot exist together. It is against the law of existence. Either you choose the ego or you choose love. You cannot choose both. And in the conflict between ego and love most people choose the ego, because it is small and controllable. Then you feel safe and secure. The vast sky of love is beautiful, but one feel afraid to go into such unknown territory. The ego can be controlled, but love cannot be controlled. With love you have to understand one thing: love is larger than you. Unless one is ready to surrender to love in trust, one cannot know what love is. And without knowing love, one cannot know what life is either. And then all talk about God is mere talk. You don't know life and you don't know love, so how can you know God? God is the crescendo of life and love. God is the highest peak of life and love. Meditation means to learn to go into the unknown. It means to go into the great, the vast. And this adventure creates the soul, The soul has to be earned. Business people has no soul, because they live a soulless and mundane existence. Meditation means being ready to always leave the unknown. This very search gives integrity. Learn the art of great love. Those who have known love have known all. Those who have missed love have missed all.”

“Love and prayer are two different expressions of the same energy. Love is more earthly, whole prayer is more unearthly, but the  experiences are the same. Love is more limited, because it aperson-to-person experience. Prayer is unlimited. It is from person to the impersonal existence. In the beginning it is from the person to the impersonal existence, but when you relate deeper with impersonal existence, the person is lost. It is like a drop disappearing  into  the ocean. The drop loses its boundaries. It become the ocean. The old identity of the drop will be gone. Many people think that they know what love is, but they do not know what love is. So how should they know about prayer, which is the highest form of love? Prayer is almost non-existential, and even love is experienced by very few people, because love also demands many essential things before they can experience it. Love cannot coexist with jealousy, anger, violence, hate,ego, possessiveness and domination. These are allanti-love phenomenon, which will destroy  the  possibility of love. To grow in real love one needs courage. Love challenges you. And you have to drop many things to become worthy of love. The first thing to drop is the ego. But we would like love with our ego intact. When love do  not exist, then everything higher than love is impossible. Prayer is the ultimate flowering of love. A man who knows love deeply, who has been able to drop his ego, will move towards  prayer  If loving one person is so beautiful, then how much more beautiful will it be to love the whole existence.  That is prayer. One need not believe in God to be able to pray. First one has to know love, then one has to know prayer and then Godis the third experience. True religiousness arises out ofl ove. Prayer is an overflowing love. And ultimately prayerreveals God to you.”

“Man can either exist as an island isolated from existence, thinking himself separate from existence, or man can live in harmony with existence. The first way is the way of the ego. It is like trying to swim upstream in opposition to the stream of life. You may succeed for a while, but sooner or later you will become tired and exhausted. The river is not fighting you. It is just your own idea of being separated that has created the whole problem. You tried to fight with life, and you got defeated. The river is not responsible. If you had taken a different approach to life, if you had accepted to go with the river of life, there would have been no fight, no struggle, no frustration and no defeat. You would not have felt that existence was against you. You would not have felt that existence is your enemy. Going with the river, floating with the river, you would have felt that the river was giving you strength. That is the way of the religious person. The first way, the way of the ego, is the way of the irreligious person. The second way, the way of the heart is to be in harmony with existence. And the moment that you let go and merge with existence, God becomes your strength. Then there is great rejoicement in your heart. Then each moment becomes a joy without any fight, without any struggle. That is the joy of being religious.”

“Love is the most delicate experience in life. And because love is such a delicate experience many people have decided not to have anything to do with love. Love has to be handled very carefully, but people are not careful. People are rough and aggressive. The ego is rough and aggressive, love is delicate. The ego is like a rock, love is like a flower. To avoid love is to avoid life. Love is the essence of life. Lov eis the soul of life. So one has to take a risk with love. To be in love is the greatest risk in life. Those who only are interestedin ambition cannot afford love. They will have money, power,status, aggressiveness and possessions. But they will live a miserable life. They will not live a happy life, because they wil lmiss love. You can't have both ambition and love, aggression and love, violence and love and possessiveness and love. If you choose love, you will have to drop all these things. You will have to drop the ego, aggressiveness, violence, the desire to be be powerful and the desire to dominate over somebody else.  Love is so precious that you will have to pay for it with all these things. Even if you know the grace of being in love only for a moment, it is worth more than the whole eternity of a loveless life. A single moment of love is eternity.”